Japanese real-time speech translation technology

“The Japanese Internal Affairs Ministry wants to provide real-time machine translation services at sightseeing, shopping and medical venues to help visitors who may feel hesitant about coming to Japan because of the language barrier.

The ministry’s vision reflects the government’s tourism goal, which is to raise the annual number of inbound travelers to 20 million by 2020, from 13 million in 2014.

It is planning to allocate ¥1.38 billion in fiscal 2015 to improve the overall quality of real-time speech translation technology and increase the available languages to 10 or more, including Thai, Vietnamese and Indonesian, to cover 90 percent of the tourists who come to Japan.

The plan to host the Olympics has no doubt increased the urgency of the project, because public and private entities alike have started working together on it on an “all-Japan basis.” (Japan Times)